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*
Some days are worse than others. And some days are worse than that.
Memories of the past have become faint to Maglor, a gray haze blending with the fog rolling in from the sea with the waves. Names are slowly forgotten, and faces are lost to the mist. Only pain remains, in all shapes and forms—like a kaleidoscope, ever changing and never the same. Perhaps forgetting is the consequence of having wandered the earth for millennia, but he still fails to accept any of it.
Cold winds drive the spray from the sea onto the land, where it mingles with the rain to hit Maglor’s face. He sits on the beach cross-legged, throwing pebbles into the surf. And although a cold wind is blowing, all he wears are some dirty rags. No shoes, no breeches, nothing of that sort as no one ever visits him.
“I was so determined not to forget anything. Not a single moment we spent together. The sound of his voice, his laughter—his smell. And yet it happened: slowly, gradually,” Maglor tells the crab which keeps him company on that rainy day, eyes filled with unshed tears. “And it will go on and on until the memories of him have completely vanished like smoke in the winds.”
A pause.
“And with the memories of him, I, too, will vanish. Somewhen, someday.”
A sob, and finally the tears stream down his cheeks.
Whenever it rained, the crab would keep Maglor company. It is larger than most, more colorful, or maybe it just appears like that as all around him is an endless sea of gray. Long ago, he had startled the strange animal by throwing a pebble carelessly into the surf. It had been a rainy day, just like now. And ever since that day it keeps coming back. Compared to the crabs in Alqualondë it is larger and more colorful; a bright orange with hues of blue at its head, shimmering whenever light falls onto it.
After a while, Maglor has begun telling the crab everything that was on his mind like an actual lunatic does. Unsurprising maybe as it is the only company he has after Elrond has left these shores.
Maglor stares out towards the horizon, veiled by low-hanging clouds. “All my life I tried to figure out who I am in the world, and for what greatness I will be remembered. I know that now.”
“Who are you, then?” the crab inquires, curiously lifting its claws as if to make a point. On the first day, it had pinched Maglor’s toe so hard that he had bled. “Tell me!”
Maglor is speechless. The crab had never answered him before. Couldn’t answer him as the crab it is, and yet it had just now.
Or maybe it’s the next stage of madness to imagine cuttlefish can talk? Why then had it never answered him before?
“No one,” Maglor states, not paying much attention to the crab as he is certain he just had imagined it answering. “Without him, I am nothing. Vanishing from the world. Slowly, gradually. When the last memory is gone, so will I...”
“Is no one alive who remembers you? Remembers you both?” it asks, coming closer. Its voice is gentle, neither distinctly male nor female, but remembering Maglor of days long gone by.
Maglor looks at the crab, surprised by the thoughtfulness of its questions, which only proves his point: he is imagining the crab’s words. “There are, but not on these lands. They live somewhere else now, in a land beyond the sea.”
The crab eyes Maglor, blinking. Then edges closer to his leg. “So why don’t you go?” it wonders.
“I can’t,” Maglor says, gaze becoming even more distant now. “I’m banned from that land.”
“Words are smoke in the winds,” the crab replies, settling down against Maglor’s naked calf. It is not the first time it has done this. “Have you ever tried?”
Maglor shakes his head. The doom pronounced by Mandos had been clear enough, and even now, thousands of years later, the words still echoed in his ears. Those words that had changed everything.
“Why not?” the crab pushes.
Fear. It’s as simple as that. Fear of rejection, and the punishment that will await him the moment he crosses the border into the Blessed Realm.
“You are not no one,” the crab says, and to Maglor, it appears as if its smile is mocking him. “You are a coward.”
“You!” Maglor exclaims, pointing towards the pot of seaweed soup simmering over the fire.
“Just try,” the crab says, unfazed. “You wouldn’t like the taste of me. I have become bitter with the tides of time.”
Maglor snorts, shaking his head. “Not so unlike me.”
“Are you bitter?” the crab laughs attempting to pinch with its claws. “May I try?”
Maglor throws a tiny pebble at it.
“So no it is this time, I understand,” the animal says. “Either way, I was not done when you diverted: you are not the person you were yesterday. Somebody else from a decade ago. And in the future, you will be different from what you are now.”
“And?” Maglor quirks his brow. He can’t tell why he lays his hand flat on the beach next to the crab. “What is it you want to tell me?”
The crab moves forward, settling in Maglor’s palm. It is warm against his touch and quite heavy. “Simple,” it says the moment Maglor lifts it up towards his face. Its voice is gentle and so very soothing to him who hasn’t talked with anyone for so long. “What matters is you, not the state of you. No matter if bathed in glory or fallen from grace—it is you, and with that, it’s the very same.”
Maglor is silent for a while. The words of the crab have him thinking, and they are rolling back and forth in his head.
“I once was bathed in glory,” Maglor tells it at last, trying to summon whatever remains of his memories. “We all were. The sons of a king, spoiled and adored, leading a carefree life. Arrogant and reckless.”
To Maglor it is as if the crab nods. “And then you fell, one by one.”
Maglor’s eyes widen and he almost drops the crab. “You know much for a crab,” he states, suspicion arising in his guts.
The crab shakes its head in denial. “Only what you told the sea for years, with words and tears. Spilled forth to forget.”
Maglor had never considered that speaking to the waves rid himself of guilt and longing. “You make it sound as if forgetting is a blessing,” he says, lifting his hand a little higher to directly look at it.
“Is it not?” The crab wonders, entirely at ease in Maglor’s palm. “Having so many memories, which no one around can share, must provoke an ache, a yearning never to be fulfilled. To forget the past means to protect yourself, to let the wounds finally heal.”
Maglor is outraged. So outraged that he drops the crab by accident. It moves away from him, as quickly as it can and disappears in the surf.
*
For many weeks, Maglor isn’t sure if the crab’s words are a betrayal or a gift; if the thoughts they provoke are. But the more he thinks about the conversation, the clearer he sees the truth. The fading of memories had begun shortly after Elrond had sailed West. The last one with whom Maglor could share the memories of Maedhros. Even then the memories had been distant but ever present all the same. Hurting, and yet keeping him alive. Sane.
But Elrond is gone now, like everyone else.
Maglor drinks from the wine he has stolen from the closest village.
Things were better when Elrond had been still there.
Kinder, simpler.
But he isn’t. Not anymore.
Maglor takes another sip. A large one this time.
He misses Elrond. Elrond, kind as summer. Wisest among the Elves.
He misses Maedhros. More specifically those days when Maedhros had been kind as summer, just like Elrond. His laugh, his smile, the warmth in his eyes.
It is a summer long gone by because the brother he remembers doesn’t resemble summer at all. His face had become one of winter, an aura of frost wafting around him wherever he went.
When the bottle is empty, Maglor’s mind is set.
‘Have you ever tried?’
As Maglor opens his mouth, the wine speaks. “Not yet,” he tells the waves that had never allowed him to surrender, voice raised in defiance. “But neither law, nor bans, not even gods themselves will ever stop me from trying.”
*
It takes a while until the little boat made from logs is finally ready. Though Maglor’s days and nights had been filled with endless labor he hasn’t been happier in ages. Content and distracted. As if the dullness of his life has vanished like mist in the sun.
“Goodbye, it is, then, I assume?” Maglor asks the crab, squatting down on the boat.
The crab sits next to the boat, almost touching the waves.
“It is,” the crab says, lifting its claws up in the air to wave goodbye.
Its voice is different today, tugging at Maglor’s memories. Familiar, but not quite. He tries but fails to make the connection, important links still missing.
Still, he cannot let it get away with it. “Almost,” Maglor says, reaching for it. “I have one last question to ask.”
The crab blinks. “Go on, then. Ask.”
Maglor stares. He is so close to solving the riddle. So very close. “Who are you?”
The crab takes its time to answer and Maglor’s patience is on the edge.
“In this world, I am the same as you,” it says at last, and to Maglor it is as if it’s smiling at him as it climbs onto the logs to sail towards the West. “No one.”
**